Maybe we just wait

It is a little over a month until I take the first step of my medical licensing exam.

Since the new year, my days have a consistent and demanding quality. Up with the sunrise, I am off to school for class and then studying until late into the night. Recently, weekends have begun to resemble weekdays, with only minor interruptions like grocery shopping or stopping to catch meals with my roommates or Tim.

At church this morning (another happy interruption), one of my favorite couple's asked me how the whole studying-thing was going. I replied that at this point in the process, I was doing alright but longing for a more balanced life and the ability to more fully express all the parts of my personality (rather than the mere fact-memorizing machine part). With the wisdom that comes from age and parenthood, they replied back to me that balance would come after my exam, and shouldn't I be on my way to the library?

and so I left.

That said, it is hard not to wish the days until April 12th away; to combat against that, it has become my lenten mantra to call myself back to the 'now'.

And, in thinking briefly about it, I am struck by the importance of these days in training.

When I raced in the 2007 Patriot Triatholon, I trained for 6 months leading up to the race. I started out in the middle of January, able to run for about 2-1/2 miles, bike for 12, and swim for maybe 15 minutes straight. Each week found me hitting the pavement (or the pool) and slowly (slowly!) extending the time and distance I was able to go. Now, race day did indeed come (and with a lot of luck and those 6 months behind me) I was able to complete all three events of the half ironman. But, when I look back on that time, I think I am most proud of the snowy weekday mornings when I would rise sleepily before dawn to get a long swim or run in, before going to sit through a day of lectures. During this time, I learned much - that I could be my own motivator, and that there was beauty and goodness in the discipline of training that was separate from that of race day itself.

Studying for this test seems an academic parallel - the training is tough, and it challenges you to get up everyday and do it again, whether you think you are making progress or not, no matter if you can think of 100 other ways you can be using your time, even if you wonder how what you do today will ever impact your future. Regardless of how April 12th turns out, this time once again reminds me that a huge portion of training is not what you are training to do but that you turn out every day to do it giving it your all.

With that said, back to studying.